More Americans lived in poverty in 2010 than in any other time that records have been collected, according to US Census data released yesterday. Median household income fell, too, and a growing number of people are without health insurance.
An additional 2.6 million people became officially poor last year, raising the poverty rate from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent. It was the fourth year in a row that the ranks of the poor grew, and Sawhill predicts poverty rates will rise to 16 percent by 2014.
I promoted this to the Education tag yesterday for a very important reason, that being that the single biggest indicator we’ve found for academic underperformance is poverty. And I can only imagine where things go if this trend continues. THIS is what we need to change if we want to improve education in a meaningful way.
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg: “We have been instructed to look at the Negro as idle, worthless, indolent and disloyal, but a careful examination of the West Indies and South America does not show this to be true…. There is not a single field of industrial activity in which the descendants of the African have not contributed their mite….” Arturo Alfonso Schomburg at the annual meeting of the American Negro Academy, December 1915
Position Paper: Fantastic Fantasy
Prevailing logic says those from the bottom who roll with the Tea Party’s line of thinking do so because they are not disheartened by the fact that the authors penning their manifesto prosper as they flounder. Instead, they are riled up by and rallying around the fact that all hell is breaking loose and it has to be someone’s fault. The Koch’s proclaim that it is the Obama Administration’s fault and many Americans have taken their word for it.These hard working citizens are open to any explanation for their misfortune that does not end in it being their fault. No matter the long-term soundness of the Obama Administration’s economic policy, current conditions make it easy for the opposition to proclaim that their policies are bad for America. Even though those framing the argument are misleading their constituents by massaging the facts to fit around their faulty reasoning, the opposition’s claims have proven convincing and catalyzing.
When the Koch’s call the President a radical egalitarian, they have found a receptive audience in American’s who are losing assets and increasing liabilities in spite of doing what they are advised would lead to propertied wealth: getting educated; applying themselves; and playing politics. Burning ambition and blind aspiration are as American as apple pie, so the rich find a receptive audience when they direct the non-rich to pull themselves up.
American’s appreciate a well-crafted story. We find fantasy fantastic.
Notably and somewhat ironically, both the Change and Tea Party movements owe much of their success to the power of compelling narratives— as did the New Frontier, Reaganism, the Third Way, and Compassionate Conservatism. In their choice between Change and the Tea Party, constituents align with the side whose fantastic fantasy about a better America they find most fascinating. Despite the fact that the Tea Party’s policies provide the rich with a mandate to operate with an insurmountable advantage, leaving the non-rich at the mercy of the rich’s benevolence, the Koch’s tell an unbelievable tale coaxing sensible citizens to buy tickets to the grand ole party.
Winning the future requires that the Obama Campaign to release a sequel to the Change blockbuster that features a phenomenal plot with a happy ending where the wealth, education, and opportunity disparity in America and in the world astonishingly subsides.
(via veryveryurban)
(Source: joshsternberg, via abcworldnews)
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New academic materials for the Division of Science and Mathematics, the Journalism and Sports Program and the Chinese Studies Program.
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Reports of the demise of newspapers...
